Former President Donald Trump was injured in a shooting at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13 just days before accepting the Republican nomination.
"The Secret Service were remarkably — if not suspiciously — slow in their protecting of the [former] President [Trump], similar to how they were slow in protecting President John F Kennedy when he was shot in Texas," former US Army psychological warfare officer and State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett told Sputnik.
"Most suspicious was that in the case of Trump, the Secret Service did not respond to reports of a shooter crawling with a gun on the roof nearby as eyewitnesses have reported," the pundit continued.
Trump's political rival President Joe Biden and other major political leaders have condemned the violence, while US media of all stripes warned against incitement and hatred amid what CNN dubbed "a wild and unpredictable election year."
According to Bennett, the incident will "make Donald Trump a kind of superhero, a man of steel". The former psychological warfare specialist suggested the images of Trump with a raised fist, bleeding and uttering: "fight, fight" have had a powerful effect on the American public.
"Trump resembled the classic statue in Washington DC of US Marines, raising the American flag on Iwo Jima in World War II," the expert remarked. "There was even an American flag directly over his head as well."
Deepening Polarization Within US Society
The shooting appears to have deepened the rift within the already polarized US society.
"In the process of this assassination attempt the shooter has unified, inspired and emboldened the Republican conservative, moderate patriot voting bloc in America to stand with Trump and to villainize and demonize all those politicians and media and other groups that dislike him or vilify him," the expert noted.
US pundits on the left and right have warned that the rally shooting could trigger further political violence with Democrats and Republicans pointing fingers at each other.
While former Barack Obama official Samantha Vinograd hinted at possible "retaliatory" attacks by right-wingers against the Biden campaign, conservative pundit Ryan Saavedra wrote on X that the Democrats and their allied media are trying to depict the conservatives as "the real dangerous threat."
The Washington Examiner alleged that Trump's death would have triggered a months-long "civil war" in the US, while the Washington Post warned the nation is not out of the woods.
A flurry of theories ranging from Trump staging the shooting to Biden ordering a hit on his political rival has popped up following the incident.
"What is the result of this shooting?" Bennett continued. "There will obviously be a Republican political victory… or a convenient 'civil war' triggered as the Trump side and the Democrats side clash."